Introduction

Internally Displaced People (IDPs) are among the least studied categories of people in the world and, hence, there are no internationally agreed operational definitions for them (Hampton 1988). The working definition that was used by the Brookings Institution and the Global IDP survey describes them as ‘persons or groups of persons who have been forced to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence as a result of, or in order to avoid, in particular, the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border’. Some scholars (McDowell 1996; Sorensen 1998) argue that this definition does not give the necessary emphasis to people displaced by development projects. We can, therefore, adapt the operational definition for ‘development-induced displaced people’ as ‘persons or groups of persons who are forced to leave their lands or homes or their possessions as a result of a development process that undermines, excludes or ignores their full participation in development and puts their livelihoods in danger without protection, in a given national territory’.

The number of IDPs is increasing with about 10 million people worldwide entering the cycle of forced displacement and relocation on an annual basis, mostly due to development projects for urban and transport infrastructure and dam construction. Of these, urban development projects reportedly cause the displacement of some 6 million people every year (Cernea 1995).